When writer/director Justin Simien’s debut indie movie, “Dear White People,” first arrived at the beginning of 2014, it was a sharp, insightful and prescient breath of fresh air— woke— a good three years before the word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017, several months before “stay woke” became a BLM call to action following the shooting of Michael Brown in the summer of 2014. When the movie evolved into a Netflix series three years later, it still had much to say, still delivering a funny, observational look at a Black Ivy League college with thoughtful characters who constantly challenged what was falsely advertised then as a “post-racial,” post-Obama society. It was of its time but seemed miles ahead of anything else in the culture. The issues it tackled were real, progressive, yet its storytelling was inventive, offering historical and cultural context while never patronizing its audience. But things have changed since then.
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The fourth and final season of “Dear White People” takes some bold, creative swings but still feels ultimately uninspired. Trying to cop Montell Jordan vibes is never a bad idea, but this version just isn’t really how to do it. Billed as an “Afro-futuristic and ’90s-inspired musical,” the show tries something different, yet still rooted in its DNA. Since it has always played with the medium of TV with ambitious filmmaking choices and narrative devices, a musical seems like a natural progression for the last season.
As the show tells us, creator Justin Simien took inspiration from 1990s Black culture and music to craft this story. The setup for how the season becomes a musical starts promisingly. Sam White (Logan Browning), the radio DJ and Winchester campus provocateur at the center of the show tells her friend and collaborator Lionel Higgins (DeRon Horton), “You are Black and gay, both groups notorious for spontaneous singing,” but just that statement is not enough explanation for characters to burst into song. So, we get a framing device set in an undetermined future time when a virus breakout and mask-wearing are the norm. Lionel is writing a book about their senior year which Sam will adapt into a musical TV show. How meta. This allows them to call on all their friends to get the full story, with each episode told from a particular character’s POV. This provides continuity as the show has used similar storytelling tactics in previous seasons, and the audience is familiar with it.
The framing device introduces a new world but only half-heartedly comes back to it in later episodes. Some of what Simien, his co-showrunner Jaclyn Moore and the writers imagine for the future is amusing. For example, one can simulate a call with an ex to reach a catharsis their relationship never had. Also, orgasms come in pill form. These are clever bits that add color to the proceedings.
But soon enough, the only constant in that post-pandemic time are airless Zoom calls. Understandable given the series was shot in COVID times, but they are not entertaining. In fact, the framing itself becomes lame exposition where the characters comment on what has transpired in the past. Other times, what they say is supposed to deepen the mystery and get the audience more invested. Instead, those scenes become a reason to activate Netflix’s double speed feature so that you can get through their drudgery as fast as possible.
The musical numbers are integrated by making the season-long story about the Black students at Winchester taking control of staging the varsity show. This allows the show free rein to add as many musical numbers as they want but also to critique the white history of varsity shows and other minstrel shows.
The musical numbers act as immediate nostalgia activators. For a certain set of the audience who were old enough in the 1990s, hearing hit songs like Tevin Campbell’s “Round and Round,” Des’ree “You Gotta Be,” I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles),” by The Proclaimers and Jamiroquai’s “Virtual Insanity” will be hard to resist. The staging of Johnny Gill’s “Rub You the Right Way” is particularly inspired. For the most part, the musical arrangements work well, the cast delivers them superbly and they feel organic to the story. But for a show billed as a musical there’s not certainly not enough music. Only two or three songs every episode. The reality is, this feels like the same “Dear White People” of the first three seasons, just a few musical interludes tacked on.
“Dear White People” has always criticized white America’s appropriation of Black culture and that certainly continues here. If Black creatives tell their stories within a broader cultural (i.e. white) framework, does that mean progress or just more appropriation? The two opposing sides are represented by Troy Fairbanks (Brandon P Bell) and Iesha (Joi Liaye), a freshman new to the show. Troy represents the establishment and working within the system while Iesha leads protests against the varsity show because it will be staged in a building that has a slaver’s name. Iesha also becomes Sam’s nemesis and Joelle’s (Ashley Blaine Featherson) romantic rival for the heart of Reggie (Marque Richardson). Yet, for a character who acts as a catalyst in many storylines, we know so little of her. In most of her scenes Iesha clearly announces her motivations to the camera; not very dramatic or true to life and it shortchanges Liaye’s performance.
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Faring better is Featherson who has a voice from the heavens and takes charge of many musical numbers. Antoinette Roberston’s Coco gets separated from most of the cast as her arc this time has her competing in “Big House” – a “Big Brother”-like show where the contestants come from prestigious colleges and compete for money and coveted jobs. That satire allows for some funny moments but isolates Roberston from the rest of the cast and offers no new surprising insights into the world of reality TV. Though it’s perhaps entirely worth it for one spot-on joke. Viewers of Big Brother and its host— Julie Chen Moonves— will chuckle and appreciate it, but that’s about it. Therein lies the crux of this season, the best moments are small and fleeting and do not sustain or hold attention.
Most of what is supposed to be dramatic tension (the varsity show and the interrelationships between creatives) is just a recycling of previous storylines. Sam is shooting a documentary about the show. Supposedly it’s a genius work of art that would jumpstart a brilliant career. Yet what we’ve seen her shoot is nothing of the sort.
A season-long “ripped from the headlines” mystery lands better than expected as a storytelling device, but there’s a tepidity in the execution of this season that makes the final product completely down the middle. As if the creators’ hearts weren’t at all into it.
Furthermore, plotlines designed to provoke felt stale, mostly because they’ve been talked about incessantly in the general culture. Nothing presented by “Dear White People” this season seems remotely challenging to the audience, a pity since the movie and series initially did exactly that. “Dear White People” the movie, and the initial series was perceptively born out of what is now obviously America’s now-laughable denial and delusion that it had grown beyond race and racism thanks to Obama. It offered wry humor and witty banter when dealing with provocative subjects. And while it played with Trump-ism and the mask-off era of his presidency, now arriving one year after that regime is over (not to mention arriving in the wake of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests), it’s arguable it just never captures the cultural moment like it should have in this finale. This final season unfortunately ends with a whimper. Having lost its true direction and sense of purpose (the ’90s throwback thing never truly working as it should), nor ever capitalizing on 2020, “Dear White People” attempts to burst into song, but never truly sings. [C]
“Dear White People” Season 4 is available now on Netflix.